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GeneralThe general chatting goes on in here.
That means talk about the LBA games and it's world.

Polaris: "And what is a guitar doing in the middle of an asteroïd anyway?"sgk: Think of it this way: it's like a message in a bottle. In our world, we put a message inside a bottle to protect it while it travels through the oceans to reach some other island. In other worlds, they put a message inside an asteroid to protect it while it travels through space to reach some other planet. In this case it is a gift, a guitar, rather than just a message.

I'm done with the translation. I'm sorry if it doesn't always make sense, but I did my best.

Philippe Vachey, about his work : Sound designer

"I'll try to sum up what I do every day.
I've started the music (I was about 12-13 years old) by playing the guitar in a "Youth and culture” center.

Then I’ve been playing in a rock band, this is how I learned my job. I didn’t have any musical background. Then I choose to go one my studies by studying IT. I’m 48, so it means that I’ve started working in the gaming industry in the 80/90’s. I began to be interested in electronic music, and found out I was able to work on my own. There was a big computering emergence; it was more possible to create games, even though there were already a few video games released by French studios.

This job takes a lot of creativity, a lot of analysis in order to be able to understand what the project is about and an ability to understand technical subjects such as computers, how it works… You should also be able to talk with other people, this is a team work. Even without being a main character in the production, you will have to talk with game designers, programmers, an artistic director because you have to take into account a range which goes from artistic to technical. To illustrate my career, I’ll show you a few videos; the first one is what we call a “track record”. I made it from videos I could find on the web, and the quality is not a good as what I wanted it to be.

About the first video : Sometimes, you have to do what we call a “test track”. When a gaming studio decide to call upon a sound designer they kind of “give him a try” to see if it fits with the spirit of the project. Actually, it did not. But, in order to indulge myself, I decided to put it in my “track record”.

This is about a lot of different games, big games, little games, etc…

[Timeline video from 04:00 to 05:29]

For most of it, I created the music, and I often was the sound designer. But for Crash bandicoot, for instance, I only made a few sound effects.
I’m often confronted with a big problem, I have to determine what kind of game it is. For which media. Mobile phone and small game consoles are rather complicated because I have to deal with memory issues and access. And I cannot achieve the ‘color’ I’m looking for. It has a direct influence on the audio quality.

I’ll show you a video of a game which is called Alone in the dark. It was a very small team. I’ve been working with Infogrames 20 years ago. At that time, we were not very aware of what we were doing we didn’t know that Alone in the dark would be such a “main stone” in the gaming industry because it was one of the first game in which you could move around in a precalculated world with an animated character. I was confronted to a small issue. First of all, at that time we were supposed to release the game on 4 “floppy disks” . I don’t remember what size they were, but I could not use what we actually use nowadays. No mp3, for instance. I could only use the computer’s abilities. There were very few sound cards. So I’ve been working with a card called the AdLib which had 12 operators, it allowed me to play 8 keys at the same time. It was a real disaster, yet it was a style exercise that I found very interesting because you have to be able to keep the essential. Moreover, we were not using samples such as drum, violon etc, we were using FM operators that we had to program at first.

So this was the introduction video. I’ll mostly be showing you “off-game” videos, openings/endings. I don’t have “in-game” sequences but I will come back to it later. So it’s a game made in 92.

[Alone in the dark video from 08:48…]

Technically, I could only use one sound at the time. We had to program the engine in order to digitalize the sounds. For the sounds effects, we had to work with a guy who was quite bright in IT in order to create a routine in the lowest hardware level so we could play sounds with no interruption inside the machine. .. But only one at the time.

[… to 11:15]

Its been 20 years. Nowadays we can do almost anything with computers.

[Little big adventure video from 11:30 …]

Working with computers was something very interesting in my opinion because I was able to experiment, to look for some “colors” because any tone you want is available, any instrument in order to illustrate the game.
Most of the time, when you start with video game music producing, I have to explain the status, I had to look for every status in the world in order to do that for a living. [I don’t understand what he means by “statut” in this sentence, sorry] I have to be realist, I was Ok with the “timeline” I told you about but occasionally this job has its ups and downs. So as a compositor, you have to take into account the economic reality, you do not always have your “head in the piano” you have to think about the fact that you must go into contact, to meet people to know about what he does, and organize your schedule. You must have good notions about music licensing because you are confronted with legislations from other countries and different kind of contracts. Since you produce music, you have to ask yourself about this. You also need management skills.
Maybe you noticed that my “timeline” ends in 2008. Actually, I spent 3 years in India to set up another Supinfo Games campus in Phule, at the south of Bombay. I came back this summer, and I’m going back to the music in a few weeks.

Here is a video of Little Big Adventure. It was almost the same team that Alone In The Dark’s. These are PC games. There is something harder to do now, we created an identity, what we call an IP with characters and a whole new universe which something GREAT for a compositor because we can actually create a universe from scratch.

[… to 15:03]

For me it’s important to - people in the last presentation talked about it too – start from the very beginning of a production, because there is some kind of a synergy between the developers, the designers and even people who draw so we can say for exemple “Oh, I would like to put some music at that moment” “Can we talk to the programmer, can you put a routine to have sound in that action etc”

The next game is Time Commando. For this game I suffered like I never did because we had a technical restriction: We had to stream a video and I could not use the CD as a support to set some music. I had to use the Midi format, a main format. At that time every compute has its own sound card and I had absolutely no control of how it was going to sound.
There was 1-2 tracks we produced in the studio but all the other tracks were not feasible in my opinion because we didn’t know to what sound card it would lead to. We had very unequal results depending on the sound quality.

We always have issues because there are always several versions such as an American version, a Japanese version, it’s never exactly the same thing. Sometime editors changes the name of the game. And when it comes to marketing they have a strong ability to impact on the product itself. And sometimes, they just don’t use my music and they replace it by another because it’s not considered this enough or that enough for the concerned territory.

This is an introduction. It was made in ~94.

[Toy commando video from 17:44 to 19:02]
[Cuts off the video because he did not have enough time]

I’ll now show you this introduction video. I really loved working on those tracks.

[Little big adventure II video from 19:06]

I was able to – because we signed with somebody from the world of music, his name is Paul de Senneville. He was the producer of Richard Clayderman , he was making background music, maybe you never heard about him – have access to a lot a possibilities. We had access to producing means that were very favorable and very interesting. It was a very unusual moment for me, because I had access to tools that I didn’t never had before.

I noticed a long time afterward that those songs slowly traveled around the world even if we didn’t do anything for this to happen, and they stayed.

For me, working a a game soundtrack is just like working on an album. There some kind of a “dramaturgy” and you need to get along with this. You have to create – conceptually – a “block” that would be your album, and at the same time, because it something interactive, a game is not a movie. It always moves. You need to find something in composition, in programming, in scripting which means the way you set the sound events they need to be flexible enough, living enough to “feed” the structure of the game itself. Si it’s also something I do, there is some kind of a sound architecture to define, in which I have to determine what event will occur. It’s made in collaboration with everybody, because sometimes there are technical restrictions. I really love working with programmers because they bring solutions. We exchange, we fiddle with things, we try stuff, of course, with game designers because they know what they want to obtain and at what time, at what part of the game.

[Interrupts himself to skip the next video, dreamcast game Toy commander]

[Enki Bilal video from 22:18 …]

The last production I worked on was a “portage” [from a comic to a game] of the universe Bilal with White Birds production. There is always a scenario, a story, and I have this basic need to get inspiration from pictures, even there are very few of it, from text, to immerse myself to imagine the universe at a musical level. There are game design elements, there are mechanicals (I now at that moment something will happened) I have some kind of a skeleton of the game with very few things at first. I have to be visual before I am able to transcribe the universe into an audio form.

[Talking about the pictures showing on his screen] I didn’t have all those because they were release as the game was released.

We always do a first track and then, if it fits (it was ok with Bilal) we can go further. The first music I do is always some kind of a synthesis of the game itself .
We won’t, as a sound designer to always do the same thing. The game I didn’t show you which is name toy commander has several sequences, several levels, this is not the same way of working. It’s kind of a ‘techno’ album, a ‘disco’ album, there are 15 tracks…
In a adventure game, it’s much more like a cohesion bond to the narration.
Then, there is this fuck*n technical restriction which is like a trigger because it will bring new ideas restrictions gives rise to creativity but at the same time it’s something you have to “by-pass” in order to achieve an homogeneity.
I didn’t talk about this but there are also budget issues. According to the budget you can reach to a certain level.
I would like to show you the epilogue of La foire aux immortels because I like it, and there is a nice poem from Baudelaire which is called Le mort joyeux [the joyful dead]."

Polaris: "And what is a guitar doing in the middle of an asteroïd anyway?"sgk: Think of it this way: it's like a message in a bottle. In our world, we put a message inside a bottle to protect it while it travels through the oceans to reach some other island. In other worlds, they put a message inside an asteroid to protect it while it travels through space to reach some other planet. In this case it is a gift, a guitar, rather than just a message.

Thank you SO MUCH Lunacy!!! You didn't have to translate all that, but you did it!! Thanks! 1.000.000 kashes to you!! Here, you've a ferry ticket.

Seriously, thanks! It was a good read. I think it was pretty neat, since that made a lot of sense.

Btw, guys. Did you notice this....?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lunacy

Maybe you noticed that my “timeline” ends in 2008. Actually, I spent 3 years in India to set up another Supinfo Games campus in Phule, at the south of Bombay. I came back this summer, and I’m going back to the music in a few weeks.

DUDE!!! The guy is back in business. Could that mean he's working on that LBA remake we heard about?? I can only hope

Polaris: "And what is a guitar doing in the middle of an asteroïd anyway?"sgk: Think of it this way: it's like a message in a bottle. In our world, we put a message inside a bottle to protect it while it travels through the oceans to reach some other island. In other worlds, they put a message inside an asteroid to protect it while it travels through space to reach some other planet. In this case it is a gift, a guitar, rather than just a message.

French is a language that sounds very monotonous compared to english
He is supposed to explain to these high school students what his job is about, so I guess he has to be very serious
From what he said, I think he is someone who likes to have fun, when it comes to music ^^